Roy Elliston, left, and Paul Reiss, center, listen to Arizona Diamondbacks announcer Daron Sutton describe what he believes to be “The Golden Age of Baseball.” A panel discussion of the same name brought together baseball fans at Sun City Grand’s Sonoran Plaza March 8.

DAVE MARTINEZ/DAILY NEWS-SUN

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Sun City Grand Club reminisces on baseball’s ‘Golden Age’

Roy Elliston, left, and Paul Reiss, center, listen to Arizona Diamondbacks announcer Daron Sutton describe what he believes to be “The Golden Age of Baseball.” A panel discussion of the same name brought together baseball fans at Sun City Grand’s Sonoran Plaza March 8.

DAVE MARTINEZ/DAILY NEWS-SUN

Daron Sutton has seen plenty of baseball in 41 years.

As the son of Hall of Fame pitcher Don Sutton, the Arizona
Diamondback play-by-play announcer has been around the game his
entire life.

Through his childhood, he was around many of Major League
Baseball’s history makers of the 1970s and 1980s, so his knowledge
base was pretty wide before last week’s Golden Age of Baseball
panel discussion in Sun City Grand.

“I received an education tonight,” Sutton said after
participating the Sun City Grand Sports Interest Club’s event. “It
was a history lesson for me, and it was great to see the passion
these guys have for the game as well as everyone in the crowd.”

The idea was the brain child of Dan Heidel, himself a Brooklyn
Dodger fan, and he took it to club president Steve Rothschild who
ran with it.

“I was deathly afraid when I posed the idea to Steve he was
going to say, ‘OK, Dan, carry the ball,” Heidel said. “Steve’s a
real bulldog, in a positive way, and he delivers.”

Rothschild said he was nervous heading into the evening but was
happy with the results. More than 180 people attended the event
inside the Sage Brush Room at the Sonoran Plaza.

“It all worked out,” Rothschild said. “Where are you going to
get a panel like this? Roland Hemond, Daron Sutton, female umpire
(Perry Barber) ... it all came together.”

Rothschild presented a plaque to Hemond during his introduction,
honoring the former general manager for earning the 2011 Buck
O’Neil Lifetime Acheivement Award from the Baseball Hall of
Fame.

Elliston, Gamble and Snider grew up on the West Coast during the
“Golden Age” and discussed the days of the Pacific Coast League.
Reiss, also known as “Mr. Met,” dressed the part in a Mets jersey
with his name on the back and talked about being a fan during the
organization’s formative years. Jebsen was “the Midwest
representative,” and grew up in a family that was split between
Chicago White Sox and Cubs fans.

The night began with Rothschild detailing the years from 1947,
when Brooklyn Dodger Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s
color barrier, to 1957 when the Dodgers and New York Giants moved
to the West Coast. The Giants’ fan interspersed his presentation
with a pair of audio tracks that highlighted Bobby Thompson’s “Shot
heard round the world” against the Dodgers in 1951 and Willie Mays’
catch in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series.

As the Thompson home run was replayed, Heidel responded by
placing his fingers in his ears and pretended not to listen.

“I could listen to that the whole night,” Rothschild said.”

With two panelists from the Bay Area — Gamble and Elliston — and
one from Seattle, Snider, the Golden Age teams for them were the
San Francisco Seals, the Oakland Oaks and Seattle Raniers.

“These were our boys of summer,” Gamble said.

“We had to listen to the radio to learn about anything going on
in the Major Leagues,” Elliston said. “But, truthfully, we didn’t
care.”

The PCL of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s featured future Hall of
Famers Duke Snider, Joe DiMaggio, Paul Waner, Tom Lasorda and Casey
Stengel. Elliston said by 1988 25 players and managers who were
elected into Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame made stops in the
PCL.

Nick Snider said this era of baseball “in the 1940s, ’50s and
’60s had the best players. Today’s players may be stronger, faster
and train better, but baseball had half the teams they have now.
There was no NBA and the NFL didn’t really have popularity until
1958 and the Baltimore Colts-New York Giants championship game. So
all the top athletes played baseball.”

Jebsen, who grew up in Illinois, pointed out an overriding theme
of the night — family.

“Who didn’t learn the game from a father, or a grandfather, or a
mother or some other family member?” Jebsen asked the crowd.

Then he admitted a hard truth about Chicago baseball during the
“Golden Age.”

“This was not the Golden Age of baseball for Chicago baseball.
The Cubs hadn’t won since 1908 and the White Sox didn’t have a
pennant for the longest time until 1959.”

While much of the talk centered on baseball’s history — Stan
Musial vs. Mays, the great pitchers of the time and Detroit Tiger
great Hank Greenberg — there was discussion about some issues
facing baseball today. One audience member asked about more use of
instant replay in baseball.

“In the case of balls and strikes I never want to see instant
replay. I want umpires calling balls and strikes” Sutton said.
“What baseball needs is a fifth umpire in the booth who is also the
official scorer, because in my mind official scoring has grown lax
over the past couple of years. It’s not a knock against official
scorers, they love the game as much as we do, but umpires know the
speed of the game and they understand when a hit is a hit and an
error is an error.”

Sutton said the rule in the broadcast booth is if they have to
show a replay two or three times at the slowest of speeds with all
the digital technology available, then the umpire got it right.

Whether baseball institutes challenges or gives the umpires on
the field an ear piece, Sutton said he is all in favor of replay
and that umpires are, too. The main reason umpires are in favor of
replay is that it would show how many calls they get right in a
given game, he said.

Now a broadcaster for an organization whose history is still in
its infacy compared to the fans who sat around him, Sutton is
excited by the passion displayed by the fans in Sun Cities and
hopes to talk about the Diamondbacks in the future much like the
panel members remember the Dodgers, Giants, Yankees and Cubs of the
’50s and ’60s.

“With only 13 years of existence, the Diamondbacks don’t have
the ‘history’ the other teams that were mentioned have,” Sutton
said. “But I look forward to talking about them in 30 years.”

While the future of baseball is a mystery, it’s still a game
that produces passion in folks of all ages, and that keeps Sutton
coming to the park each summer.

“We can talk about the way the game use to be and where it’s
headed,” Sutton said. “I know I’m scared of where its headed, and
I’m only 41. It’s still a grand game and its romantic form still
exists in the way it did during the Golden Age.”

GOLDEN AGE OF BASEBALL TIMELINE

• 1947: Jackie Robinson breaks Major League Baseball’s color
barrier.

• 1948: Cleveland wins World Series with Satchell Paige and Bob
Feller.

• 1949: Yankees win first of seven World Championships during
the era.

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